Parents of baby girl seek help on rare brain tumor

The parents of an 11-month girl, who was diagnosed with a rare brain tumor, are looking for help from abroad in an effort to save their child.

The girl, Yang Yang, suffers from atypical teratoid/rhabdoid tumor (AT/RT), a rare and aggressive form of cancer that occurs among children.

"Doctors at the Shanghai Children's Medical Center have told us that my daughter has only some months to live," said Yang Jing, the girl's mother. But she and her family are not about to give up.

The baby was first diagnosed with pneumonia at Renji Hospital in September and was transferred to Shanghai Children's Medical Center after her situation worsened with a facial paralysis.

On October 25, a Beijing doctor was invited to operate on Yang Yang and remove the tumor in her brain. The tumor's size was bigger than an egg and was bonded to the brain stem. Yang said her daughter needs urgent after-treatment but Chinese hospitals do not have the experience of treating the disease.

Doctors at Shanghai Children's Medical Center said they come across cases like this just once or twice a year.

Yang even went to Beijing where she visited five hospitals but it was all in vain.

"The hospitals either did not have any cases that were successful or simply did not haven't come across an AT/RT case," she said.

She corresponded with hospitals abroad and got feedbacks from University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, St Jude Children's Research Hospital and Dana Frber Cancer Institute. But most of them wanted her to bring the baby to the US, which is expensive. The family has already spent 120,000 yuan (US$19,704) in the past two months.

"The ideal situation would be that my daughter receives the treatment in China with help from abroad," Yang said.